Arccos Golf Review: What Can This AI Do for Your Game?

Arccos Golf is a combination of smart sensors that screw into the butt of your club, and an app that functions as a rangefinder and caddy on the course, and a golf coach off of it.

Together, Arccos tracks nearly every aspect of your golf game to pinpoint your strengths and weaknesses, and what you need to do to improve between rounds.

The Arccos sensors fit into the end of your grip on each club, and pair with your smartphone, Arccos Caddie Link, or Apple Watch, to automatically detect when you hit a shot. Arccos marks your club selection and location on the course for every shot hit. With this information, it tracks your distances with each club, performance in every facet of the game, and tendencies.

One detail that may seem minor to some golfers, but is extremely important if you want accurate data, is that you must mark the hole location on every hole. This can be done pretty quickly via any of the pairing devices. However, if you are pairing with your phone, you will either have to take your phone out of your pocket on every green, or edit the hole locations after the round. If an Arccos user has already played the course that day and set the hole locations, those locations are crowd-sourced for all other users that day.

The sensors come in either individual units that screw into your club, or built in to Arccos Smart Grips. As mentioned above, the sensors need to pair with something that tracks data from each shot. The three options are a smartphone, Apple Watch, or Arccos Caddie Link.

As long as you own a smartphone, you aren’t required to purchase anything additional to get your Arccos sensors up and running. The sensors pair with your smartphone through the app. The caveat is you will then need to keep your phone in your front lead pocket throughout the round. This can be an inconvenience for men who don’t find that to be comfortable, and an outright deal-breaker for women who don’t always have a front pocket in their golf attire.

I usually pair Arccos with my Apple Watch, and it's a pretty good experience. The setup is quick and easy, I didn’t have to worry about keeping my phone in any specific pocket, and I always access to yardages without having to dig through my pocket or pull out a laser rangefinder while I play.

If you use an older Apple Watch -- I use the Series 3 -- you'll find Arccos is no longer optimized for your device. As with other Apple devices, it will stop being supported sooner or later, and you'll be all but forced to upgrade to a newer version.

The Caddie Link is a small rectangular device, about the size of a credit card, that clips to the waist of your pants, shorts, or skirt, and connects with your Arccos sensors to track your round. The Link replaces the need for a phone or watch to track your shots.

The Arccos rangefinder offers real and adjusted yardages. The Arccos Caddie Number is adjusted for temperature, altitude, humidity, slope, and wind. The AI caddie combines this number with your performance data to recommend the perfect club for every shot.

The caddie number includes adjustments that aren’t legal in tournament play, so if you’re competing, you’ll need to toggle that feature off, but during casual rounds, it’s a great way to make sure you’ve got the proper club in your hand, and learn how much each element influences the distance of a shot.

The Arccos Caddie can even give you the ideal strategy for each hole, with a most likely score for each.

My overall rating of the Arccos system is 8 out of 10. The ability to get an unbiased, in-depth look at each individual aspect of my game is invaluable, and the process for collecting that data is pretty simple. Of course, there are some things that could be improved.

The average male golfer holds about a 14 handicap, but not all 14 handicaps are created equal. Some may hit it straight but struggle around the greens. Others may hit it long but rack up penalty strokes, and others may have a great short game, but they’re relying on it 17 times per round. The dashboard allows players to identify which areas of their game are good, and which need improvement.

• You get five handicaps from Arccos that update after every round: an overall handicap, and individual handicaps for your driving, approach game, short game, and putting.
• One cool new feature Arccos offers is it now integrates with the USGA handicap system, so you can prepare and post your scores to your handicap directly from Arccos.
• The whole system is easy  to get set up and get it running on the first tee.
• The "Preview Caddie" feature in the App gives you your optimal strategy for each hole on a golf course, so you can plan out your round before you play.

As with any product, there are things with Arccos that could be improved. Here are the pain points I've had in two seasons of using Arccos.

• In the first few months alone I lost two sensors, both times from my putter. I had to switch my putter grip to a SuperStroke Traxion and purchase Arccos' SuperStroke adapter to secure the sensor.
• When playing an 18-hole round at a 9-hole facility you must log two separate 9-hole rounds, instead of having the option to make it one 18-hole round. Golfers who play most of their golf at 9-hole courses want the option to log 18-hole rounds on those courses.
• Arccos tends to miss shots every couple holes, so the post-round routine of adding in those missed shots, plus setting or confirming hole locations and confirming other details can take 15-20 minutes.
• Arccos charges an annual subscription which went up from $100 per year, to $155.88 per year ($12.99 per month).

An investment into Arccos isn’t necessarily cheap. You’re looking at close to a $200-$300 initial investment, with a $155.88 subscription cost per year after that.

A set of Smart Sensors costs $200. The Smart Grips, which house a sensor, range from $200-$250 depending on which model grip you want. If you want the Caddie Link, that’s an extra $150 on its own, or you can bundle various products to save a little money.

Either way, it all adds up pretty quickly. The information is valuable, but there are other, less expensive alternatives that provide similar information, including Shot Scope and Garmin watches, which don't charge annual subscriptions.